Paperwhite Narcissus (21 page)

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Authors: Cynthia Riggs

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“You certainly took your time.”
Audrey was sitting in the shade of the bridge. She got to her feet and came toward Calpurnia.
“Where is everyone?” Calpurnia asked. “I thought there’d be several boats and lots of people.”
Audrey shrugged. “Change your mind about driving me back to Edgartown?” She held out her arms. “No weapons, see? Cute car.”
“Get in,” said Calpurnia. “What about Colley’s Internet affair?”
“I knew that would interest you,” Audrey said. “I’ll tell you when we have a private place to talk.”
They drove to the main road in silence. The sand road was overhung by trees and shadows and light flickered across the women’s faces.
When they reached the paved road, the light was suddenly glaring, reflected from the waters of Nantucket Sound to their right. Audrey put on sunglasses.
Calpurnia broke the silence. “Did you stay on your boat last night?”
“Never again,” said Audrey. “I tried to sleep on the backseat in a sleeping bag. It was colder than hell and everything I own got soaked by dew. The moon was like a searchlight, the wind howled, and the surf was so loud I couldn’t think straight. I was afraid my boat would get banged up on that cheesy metal dock.”
“Why on earth did you bring your boat over so far ahead of
time?” Calpurnia asked. “It’s not exactly a room at the Harbor View.” Calpurnia pulled into the ferry line on the left side of the road behind one other car. “And where are all the people you said would be around?”
Audrey smirked, and took a package of chewing gum out of her pocket. “I knew you wouldn’t come over if you thought I was alone.” She took out a stick, unwrapped it, and put it in her mouth, without offering a piece to Calpurnia.
“Why get there so early?” said Calpurnia again. “It’s only a couple of hours, three at most, from Maciel Marine.”
Audrey chewed without answering.
The ferry arrived and Captain Brad waved them aboard. He looked from one woman to the other, not hiding his surprise at seeing them together.
“I hear you’re taking people out in your Chris this weekend, Mrs. Fieldstone. Getting things ready at the bridge?”
Audrey smiled. “It seemed like a good thing to do.”
Calpurnia parked in front of the Harbor View Hotel at the end of North Water Street. She and Audrey politely discussed the best place for a private yet visible talk and decided on the beach next to the harbor lighthouse. They trudged down the sand path between the wild beach roses, now covered with marble-size green rose hips and a few blossoms, some pink and some white.
The high tide of several hours ago had washed away footprints from the day before and left a line of tangled seaweed and shells that paralleled the water’s edge. They sat back from the tide line on clean sand, several feet apart.
Audrey peeled the silver wrapper from another stick of gum, added it to the piece already in her mouth, and said, “What shall we start with, Colley’s new fling or the reason I called you?”
“I know all about Colley’s ‘flings,’” said Calpurnia.
“But this chick has money. Lots and lots of money.”
“Where did you get this?”
“I told you, my goons are observing your husband. They’ve been asked to get my money from Colley.”
“The Internet, I suppose?”
Audrey shrugged. “You can find anything you want on the Internet.”
“Who is she?”
“I thought that would get your attention. She’s a computer software developer, a nerd, who invented some gizmo that blocks spam. Now she’s got more money than God.”
“Why on earth should she be interested in Colley?”
“She doesn’t care whether he has money or not. He can be quite charming when he wants to be.”
Calpurnia smiled wryly. “I suppose Colley figures she’ll be so charmed, she’ll give him the half million?”
“I don’t care where he gets the money,” said Audrey. “The name she uses on the Internet is Joy. Cute, huh? She lives in California someplace. That’s all I know about her.”
Calpurnia slipped off her sandals and dug her feet into the sand. “Why are we meeting, besides my being conned into chauffeuring you?”
Audrey chewed her gum slowly, then spoke in a low voice. “I’m going to the police. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since Ambler was killed.”
“I don’t want to hear about it, Audrey.”
“We’ve got to talk.”
“I don’t know why,” said Calpurnia.
Audrey picked up a scallop shell and dusted off the sand. “He didn’t make a sound.”
“It’s convenient to have him dead, though, isn’t it? How many millions will you inherit?” Calpurnia looked out at the harbor. A sailboat was tacking into the narrow channel between Chappaquiddick and Edgartown. “That is, if things go according to plan, right? Did he know about Buddy?”
“I keep seeing the blood.” Audrey tossed the shell toward the water.
“Don’t forget whose idea it was to play a little trick on Ambler.”
“I never intended it to end that way.”
“No?” Calpurnia stretched her legs out in front of her, crossed them, put her arms behind her and leaned back. “You were going to let him swim to shore, right? Five miles to Nantucket, ten miles to the Vineyard, in fifty-degree water?”
“We were going to circle around and pick him up.”
“Right,” said Calpurnia. “Is that what you’re planning to tell the police?”
“He’d still be alive if you hadn’t put the boat in gear.”
Calpurnia sat up straight and brushed the sand off her hands. “You’re blaming me, are you? You shoved him overboard, or would you rather forget that part?”
“Am I the only one who’s having trouble with this? Can you sleep after what happened?”
“The whole thing was your idea, remember? First Ambler and Colley cook up that scheme with me as a cheap call girl …”
“You weren’t cheap, darling, as I recall.” Audrey, too, stared out at the sailboat.
“Then you call me to play a little trick on Ambler because, in your words, he was two-timing both of us. Meeting Candy Keene on Nantucket.” Calpurnia drew up her legs and put her arms around her knees.
Audrey muttered, “That cheap stripper.”
“Really? ‘Cheap stripper’? He marries the daughter of an alcoholic pig farmer from Secaucus? Who’s still married to a garage mechanic? Not that there’s anything wrong with garage mechanics. Or pig farmers.” Calpurnia laughed. “Candy Keene flies over to Nantucket, intending to tell Ambler about Buddy, who had tracked his wife Audrey to Martha’s Vineyard after a fellow mechanic pointed out his wife’s picture in a year-old copy of
People
magazine.” Calpurnia took a breath. “Only his wife was not identified as Mrs. Buddy whatever, she was identified as the elegant Mrs. J. Ambler Fieldstone. Okay?”
Audrey got to her knees and slapped Calpurnia.
Calpurnia’s head flew back and her eyes watered. She laughed again. “Finally getting through to you, am I? You still want to go to the police?”
“I wasn’t the one who killed Ambler, darling.”
“Let me guess what your rationale is. If you tell the police you ran over your alleged husband by accident …”
“I wasn’t at the controls.”
“ … the police will think, such a nice conscience-stricken widow would never, ever shoot and then poison her rival, nor would she ever, ever clobber her shyster lawyer, who—this is an editorial aside—knew about Buddy and was probably threatening to blackmail her.”
Audrey put both hands over her ears. “Stop it!”
“You’re getting sand in your hair,” Calpurnia said.
Audrey stood up. “Calpurnia, we’ve got to stop fighting. We have to come to some kind of truce.”
“We tried that once before, and look what happened.”
“I can’t sleep.” Audrey chewed. “Whenever I close my eyes I see blood foaming up behind the boat, then his body …”
“You think telling the police will cure all that? You go to the police and I’ll tell them the whole story.” Calpurnia leaned back on her hands again, and Audrey sat down.
“Let’s look at it from the viewpoint of the police. Suppose I tell them the rest of the story. Ambler wasn’t your husband. Buddy was. When the police learn about Buddy, that’s all they need for motive.”
“I’ve taken care of Buddy.”
“So you said. Are you going to tell the police that you have? Where have you hidden
his
body?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Are you going to tell the police that you made some nice divinity fudge for Candy Keene because you knew she’d enjoy it and how could you possibly know it was laced with cyanide? Is that what you’re going to tell the police?”
“
I
didn’t kill Candy.”
“The identity of the killer will seem damned obvious to the police. Then, of course, when you learned that Candy had told Al Fox about Buddy, you had to take care of him, too. Are you going to tell the police all that? That all three deaths were accidents? And now you’ve taken care of Buddy?”
Audrey’s face had paled. “I didn’t
kill
Buddy.”
“Your words. You took care of Buddy ‘permanently.’ My interpretation of ‘permanent’ is ‘permanent.’”
“I
paid
Buddy off. Buddy loves money.”
“More than being married to you?”
“More than anything. He found a lawyer who’s getting us a retroactive Mexican divorce. As long as Buddy doesn’t make waves, he knows I’ll pay.” Audrey sifted sand through her long fingers with their red-tipped nails and continued to chew. “I didn’t kill either Candy or Al Fox. I didn’t need to.”
“Who did, then? You’re going to wreck your manicure doing that.”
Audrey stopped playing with the sand and brushed her hands together. “I assumed you were the killer, if you must know.”
“So that’s why you want to go to the police. To turn me in?” Calpurnia snorted. “And what are you going to tell the police my motive was? I can see why I might want to murder my husband, but why Candy and Al Fox?”
“This is a weird conversation.” Audrey dug her fingers into the sand making five neat holes, pulled her fingers out, and examined her nails.
“Candy was an airhead,” said Calpurnia. “Even Colley recognized that after a year of marital bliss. And Al Fox? He didn’t have a hold over me the way he did with you.”
“Just the eight-million-dollar trust fund.”
“Colley can’t touch the money and I get a good chunk of it when he dies. That’s an excellent motive for my killing Colley. Before he runs off with Joy. Unfortunately, he’s still alive.”
Audrey glanced at Calpurnia. “What did Colley do with the four hundred fifty thousand he got from Ambler?”
“I have no idea. He’s close-mouthed about the money. I know your thugs frightened him, which is when he went to Al Fox to get a loan from the trust.”
“Did he buy real estate?”
“I doubt it. He’d brag about acquiring something like that. Anyway, four hundred fifty thousand doesn’t go far if he spent it on Vineyard real estate.” Calpurnia shrugged. “Forget Colley. I’m curious to know what you think my motives are for the two murders.”
“Candy was sucking alimony out of Colley. And I understand Al Fox renegotiated an annual cost-of-living increase for her.”
“Cost of living, ha!”
“Two motives right there.”
“You think I’d trouble myself to kill someone over a mere forty or fifty thousand a year?”
“Frankly, yes,” said Audrey.
Calpurnia stood up, brushed the sand off the back of her trousers, bent over, and picked up her sandals. “We’re not getting anywhere with this conversation. Instead of going to the police, you know who we should talk to?”
Audrey, too, got up. “I was thinking the same thing. Victoria Trumbull.”
 
When Victoria sat down in her usual armchair in the West Tisbury police station, Casey snickered. “I’m sorry, Victoria. I keep remembering Candy Keene dusting off that seat with her scented lace hanky.”
Victoria scowled. “I came here to make a long-distance phone call. May I?”
“Where to?”
“Arizona.”
“Police business?”
“It’s a number Colley called recently.”
Casey pushed the instrument toward Victoria. “Go ahead. I won’t ask why.”
Victoria dialed a number and waited. A disembodied voice told her she’d reached Sun Spa and demanded that she press one or two or three—up to seven—if she wanted the voice mail of one of the doctors, and to remain on the line to speak to an
operator. Victoria raised her eyebrows and looked at Casey while the voice went through her options. Casey fiddled with a retractable ballpoint pen, snapping the point in and out.
Finally, Victoria got a live person. She said, raising her voice a quarter octave so she sounded like a young woman, “This is Mr. Jameson’s secretary.”
Casey opened her mouth to say something and glanced up instead at the ceiling, where a spider was building an intricate web.
Victoria continued in her girlish voice, “Could you confirm the date and time of his appointment?” Before the operator had time to demur, Victoria added, “He’s terribly absent-minded, and didn’t give me all the details, and I need to make his plane reservations.”
Victoria listened and made a few notes. “Thank you so much,” she said. “And that was Dr. Papadoupoulis?” One of the names she’d picked up from the automated voice. She nodded and glanced up at Casey, who was not looking at her.
“Thank you for correcting me. Mr. Jameson is absolutely impossible.” Victoria had been holding her chin up to maintain the high pitch. “He had it all wrong. And Dr. Gurney is so wonderful. Mr. Jameson says so many good things about him.” She cleared her throat and glanced again at Casey, who was still watching the spider. “Was it Harvard Medical School he went to?” She waited. “Mr. Jameson had that all wrong, too. You know what these vain men are like, I’m sure. Thank you so much. I’ll correct his records and make sure he gets on the right airplane.”
Victoria hung up, pushed the phone back to Casey, and sat back again in her armchair, with a self-satisfied smile.
“What was that all about, Victoria?”
“I know what Colley did with that four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Can you find something for me on the Internet?”
“What?”
“The specialty of a Dr. Theodore Gurney, who graduated from Southwestern University Medical School.”
Casey busied herself on the computer. Victoria stood up, went to the window, and watched the swans on the mill pond. Seven cygnets had hatched in the spring. Now there were only two. Snapping turtles had eaten the other five. She turned around when she heard Casey sigh.
“Did you find out anything?”
“How’s this?” Casey moved her computer mouse around and the image on the screen shifted. “Dr. Gurney specializes in cosmetic surgery. Reversing the aging process. Skin tightening. Facial reconstruction. He’s currently practicing at Sun Spa Clinic in Tempe, Arizona, with a Dr. Cornelia Siegelman, who specializes in tummy and fanny tucks, thighs and upper arms.”

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